next »

[i2nQuinn]

Released! Get it: http://i2ngames.itch.io/hands-off

Trailer:


Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=414257618

`Hands Off!` is a game about yelling at your friends and "accidentally" bumping their controller when they're about to win. It's also a one-on-one race to throw pegs into holes. The first player to get two pegs in wins.

The game started life as a game jam game (three theme words: Nemesis, Peg, Contemplate). Contemplation isn't forced in the current version, originally there was a level with all square pegs and round holes.

Old screenshot - Interstate Arcade version

New screenshot - v1.0

Quick facts:
 - Two player competitive (3/4 people sharing two controllers is definitely encouraged though)
 - Control two hands at once - how ambidextrous are you?
 - Went on tour! (http://skgames.com.au/interstatearcade/)
 - Controllers required
 - Unity3D

Thanks for checking it out!

[i2nQuinn]

stage-show-in-a-box

What I've been working on:

Boring Stuff!
(Controller select / setup)

The original (and Interstate Arcade) version of the game depended on XInput - this made it easy to have players/controllers join the game (and require no further configuration) but obviously limited players to XBox 360/One controllers.

I turned to InControl but ended up having trouble keeping track of controllers across scenes (without starting from one scene all the time) and various other issues.

Enter Rewired, which advertises that it handles pretty much every controller-related use case you can think of. After a quick experiment with an evaluation copy, I purchased it and have been pretty happy so far.

After a day's work I have a system that will detect if controllers need connecting/setting up, pause the game automatically and pop up the controller setup stuff! It still has some rough edges (i.e. is using Unity's OnGUI system) and needs to save/load configurations/"maps" (which is supposed to be pretty straight forward with Rewired) but it's working well.


Music!

Between the various boring bits, I've started work on a new main music theme. We've been updating the visuals/theme of the game and it's become a bit more stage-show (in a box) influenced - so I'm trying to make music that fits a micro stage show. Will post again when I have something listenable!


Thanks for reading!


[I'm assuming it's okay to bump a devlog post with devlog stuff, let me know if that's not the case]

[i2nQuinn]

The visuals have had an update. Here are our three arenas:

I've more-or-less finished the controller setup/binding screen. Comes with a little test controller, mainly used to indicate recommended button choice if the user needs to bind controls.

Our issue tracker has had around 15 open issues pretty consistently for the last month or two. Most of them get closed pretty quickly, but there's always more being added!


Thanks for reading!

[i2nQuinn]

Went a bit quiet after the last post. For shame.

Development has been coming along though and Hands Off! is very nearly complete! Well, version 1.0 anyway.

Most recently I set up a continuous integration / build server using TeamCity. There was quite a bit of work getting it set up how I wanted it, but was well worth it as new commits to the repo automatically trigger builds for all platforms and scripts package up the binaries.

Between bugfixes and polish, I've been putting together some videos using the Video Sequence Editor in Blender, which I can definitely recommend. These will be up soon.

We're gearing up to release the game at the end of the month (March).

Finally, we got some footage of the game being played at the Interstate Arcade Brisbane event:

[marcgfx]

I like the visual style, although it could be considered overcomplicated for a simple game. one thing that kind of bugs me, is the aliasing on the edges. this may sound picky, but the rest of the image looks really nice and smooth. I would be interesting in seeing a gameplay video.

[i2nQuinn]

I like the visual style, although it could be considered overcomplicated for a simple game. one thing that kind of bugs me, is the aliasing on the edges. this may sound picky, but the rest of the image looks really nice and smooth. I would be interesting in seeing a gameplay video.

Thanks for the feedback! If you're referring to the aliasing in the three 'new visuals' screenshots, I think that's mostly a matter of me forgetting to turn anti-aliasing on! Example with AA: http://i2ngames.com/images/handsoff/i2nGames_HO_Hex01.jpg

We have a trailer up now, so you can see the game in motion -

[marcgfx]

yeah looks a lot better . As mentioned, I really like the visuals. the aliasing was really annoying me on the cog-wheels, but now I must admit, I still dont like the cog-wheels. the texture is pretty bad in my opinion. way too noisy, but with no sense of actually being dirt. if its a baked texture, I'm sure that could be improved. I would likely also look better if it was simply clean.
the video: animation looks really nice and smooth but the music is killing me, I would turn it off in heart-beat. It seems very technical and the rest of the game looks more like a bar-setting or something old-scool. maybe the music should match?

[i2nQuinn]

Thanks again!

We wanted the trailer to be twitchy and fun (like the gameplay), so we used a song created when the game visuals were much simpler and the focus was purely on the gameplay. The music in-game has been updated with the visuals/theme, with a piano as the main instrument (classy!). We recorded a gameplay video the other day with the music playing, if you’d like to take a look.

The cog/metal material has been updated for the next build, thanks for pointing it out!

Gameplay trailer:

[marcgfx]

was this a game against another person? I assume so, as it seemed like both players were only focusing on one hand at the time. If I understand correctly, the two analog sticks represent the two hands? maybe you could add some spice by having different abilities, or creating combos by using both hands (e.g. passing the ball, or grabbing with both hands). looks like quite a tough multi-tasking challenge!

The music is much better than before, but rather boring (not that I could make anything even close to this).

[i2nQuinn]

We've hopped on the Greenlight train! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=414257618
Yes votes are greatly appreciated but are not mandatory

We've been doing some testing on older/low-end PCs (some with absolutely abysmal graphics cards!) to work out our minimum hardware spec. I was surprised at what the game can run on, even if it's at very low resolutions. Testing at low resolutions and various aspect ratios has been a part of my testing regime for most of the development process, so that didn't throw up any major issues and the game remains very much playable at these resolutions.

1024x768 is generally the lowest resolution we support (i.e. if something breaks below that we don't mind), but I have a 640x480 setting in Unity named "Seriously?" anyway!

was this a game against another person? I assume so, as it seemed like both players were only focusing on one hand at the time. If I understand correctly, the two analog sticks represent the two hands? maybe you could add some spice by having different abilities, or creating combos by using both hands (e.g. passing the ball, or grabbing with both hands). looks like quite a tough multi-tasking challenge!

The music is much better than before, but rather boring (not that I could make anything even close to this).

Thanks again again!

Yes, it's a 1v1 competitive game and is largely a test of your ambidexterity! Even we still find it difficult to not get tunnel-vision while playing - usually when you can do multiple things at once you win!

[i2nQuinn]

Hands Off! is built and ready for its 1.0 release on Tuesday!

Our Greenlight campaign continues!

[i2nQuinn]

Hands Off! (1.0) is released! Get your hands on it: http://i2ngames.itch.io/hands-off

Next time on i2n Games: Hands Off is getting an update in a deliberately unspecified amount of time - we've got a bunch of possible ideas and are currently deciding exactly what we'll be adding!